


After Dark

by larkspurs



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Developing Relationship, Intimacy, M/M, Non-Binary Boss (Saints Row), Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:13:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkspurs/pseuds/larkspurs
Summary: “Moonlight?” They asked in a whisper, still close to his lips. He grinned.“Moonlight,” he echoed, “because I never see you in the sun.”





	After Dark

He saw them the most clearly at night. Nights in Stilwater were never very dark; the false lights of the city bled into the sky and kept the stars away, but the shadows were deeper and longer and the neon signs flashed well past dawn. In the summer, the nights were hot and humid, and the air would weigh down on their skin and stifle their breath. That was how the nights were when they first met-- false lights, deep shadows, moisture hanging in the air.

Nights in Stilwater were not romantic, but he saw them the most clearly at night.

During the day, under the unusually blazing hot sun, they were moving too fast to see. They were racing motorcycles down the blacktop, firing a gun into the warehouses, running across the pavement until their body ached from the exertion. They moved too much to see, to understand, to really experience them.

The offices in Purgatory’s underground were cool, but damp. The air hung still but a tad frigid, reminding all of them that they walked under the streets of Stilwater. When they were in Purgatory, they might stand still, but they would stand alert. They would be waiting for something, like a predator watching for prey, and he didn’t see them as much as he saw the entity that was the Boss of the Third Street Saints.  
At night, when the dust settled and the sun set, was the only time he really saw them at all.

The Red Lite crib was dark, cold, and solitary. It was always just the two of them, and when he was on top of them he could see them. Underneath him, they weren’t the Boss. They were simply themself, and he could indulge in that, even if it was obscured in darkness.

After weeks of this, though, he began to grow agitated.

They only called him after dark. He only ever saw them after dark. Day after day, only on the low, only through the shade of nighttime did he ever get to see them.

“Why don’t you ever hit me up in the daytime?” Pierce complained, relaxing in the sheets of their bed. It was close to 2 a.m., the Boss was reclining against his side, and he was wiping the remains of their lipstick off his face.

“I hit you up during the day all the time,” they said, ghosting their hand over his bare chest. They began to toy with his chest hair, not even bothering to look up at him.

“I don’t mean for gang shit. I mean for stuff like this.” He chucked the balled up tissue into the trash, face finally clean, and they immediately swept up to press a long-lingering and deep kiss to the corner of his mouth, leaving a faint purple smudge there.

They mumbled their words against his skin. “Why do you wanna fuck when the sun is up? It just makes things sweatier.”

He sighed as they slinked back down to relax on his chest, head placed perfectly on his breast. “I feel like a side bitch.”

They laughed and ran their hand over his stomach, traced down to his thighs, and danced back up his adonis belt. His skin was warm, tinted with sweat, and shifted between being soft and malleable to rough and scarred depending on where they strayed. “You aren’t. You’re my only bitch.”

He grabbed them by their waist and pulled them atop his own body, so their chests pressed into one another and their face sat inches from his own. “Don’t play with me, Boss.”

They were grinning, and he felt their hands slip down his sides.

“But I love doing it.”

They called him again two nights later, after 11, with the usual request. He couldn’t think of a time he’d ever said no. He could get to the Red Lite crib in under 30 minutes thanks to the tendencies of nighttime traffic, but that didn’t mean he didn’t lament his subjection to only getting to touch them in the dark.

During the day, he couldn’t even slip his arm around their waist. He couldn’t kiss them, or hold them in his arms, or rest his head in the crook of their neck, and he hated how badly he wanted to. He wanted to breathe them in. He wanted them to be his, but his reality was to only be with them as a lover after dark, and that made his heart tinge with bitterness.

When they opened the door in their thin black nightgown and their hair hanging loose at their chin, his sorrows were overwhelmed with endearment. Bittersweet, he decided to call that feeling, as he reached up to tuck their hair behind their ear.

“Hey, moonlight,” he said. He closed the door behind him and they pressed him back against the door. They kissed him deeply, sweetly, and he knew that was their hello.

“Moonlight?” They asked in a whisper, still close to his lips. He grinned.

“Moonlight,” he echoed, “because I never see you in the sun.”

They snorted, laughed, and then pulled him close. They were so tall, seven feet and two inches, that his face rested comfortably on their collar as they held him. “I like that,” they said. “Even if you’re using it to insult my habits.”

In a matter of minutes the conversation was lost to lips on necks and hands on thighs, until he gasped in a breath, “ _Moonlight_ ,” and it felt like he’d finally found their name.

It was true that even after all this, he didn’t know what the Boss’s real name was. He had never actually asked. But, it was easier to replace “Boss” with a more intimate title than it was to shoulder past their walls.

Moonlight lingered. When alone, "Boss" fell out of his vocabulary and they became his moon. He wondered if the Boss could feel the way the affectionate name was tinged with bitterness, could tell it was a push to take their relationship further disguised in a pet name. If they could, they never showed it. For months, moonlight lingered, even after he learned their real name, even after they changed from a Red Lite studio crib to an expensive penthouse, even after he'd found other pet names that lacked the bitter tinge, even after he began to realize the Boss wanted all the same things he wanted.

The Boss didn't want to be a moonlight lover any more than he did. He could see it in the way their touches lingered before he stepped out the door, the way they held onto him through the night like they wouldn’t ever be ready for him to leave, and how they stole his chain with the P-shaped rifle and wore it around their neck like a proclamation. He discovered it in the way they called him every night to be with them, how their late night hook ups became desserts and movies on the couch and their hands entwined in his, how sex became secondary to their time together.

But there was something holding both of them back. They didn't know what. It lingered in the air between them, it glistened in the Boss's eye as they pulled away from kisses. He felt it in their skin when he touched them, and it was impossible to drive it away. He wished he knew what it was. He wished he understood.

Was it fear? Perhaps just an uncertainty. Neither of them knew much about navigating long term romance, and they knew less about how a lieutenant and a Boss should carry on with it. They were people hounded by uncertainty-- how could people like them ever be certain even of living another 24 hours, let alone certain of giving their all to another person? Tomorrow they could both be dead; worse, tomorrow only one of them could be dead. They’d seen it too many times. They’d watched it tear apart their friends and leave their chests hollow. They’d experienced it more closely than anyone would like to admit. Perhaps, that uncertainty bred fear, and an issue with commitment.

For a while longer, Pierce resigned himself to the simpler pleasures of planting kisses along their thighs, sleeping with his ear to their heartbeat, and knowing that they were his for as long as the moon was out.

He wanted so badly to see them in the sun, but he came to peace with the moon.

He lay in their bed once more, tracing imaginary shapes along their bare sides, watching shadows shift across their russet skin. Their cat was curled up to his opposite side, purring contentedly, and he felt a strange sense of domesticity. The Boss was nestled into the crook of his neck, exactly where they loved to be, and he thought they were asleep until they whispered, "Pierce?"

"Yeah?" He kept his voice as low as he could. Even alone, it felt wrong to shatter the silence.

"Go out to breakfast with me tomorrow."

It was a request, he knew, but the Boss did not know how to make requests and phrased them like orders. The difference was in their tone.

He blinked, surprised. The Boss was usually gone before he woke up, off to the day's work. Places to burn, people to kill. He looked down to them, but they were not looking back at him. He brushed his hand over their cheek, felt the marble-like texture of the massive scar on their face, and pushed their hair back and away. He began to run his fingers through the fine strands, letting each smooth, black cascade collapse against their shoulder.

"I'd like that," he finally replied. "Where to?"

A small shrug was felt. "Just Apollo's, I guess." A kiss was pressed to his neck. "Or wherever you wanna go."

"Apollo's is good." He pressed his cheek into the top of their head and closed his eyes. "Go to sleep, Moonlight."

They smiled against his skin.

In the morning, he woke up just as soon as they stepped out of the shower. Their wet hair clung to their broad face, and through the windows he suddenly saw them bathed in light.

They leaned against the bathroom door frame, massaging the water out of their hair, and he watched droplets slip down their skin as they smiled at him.

"Good morning, Sunshine," they said, their voice low and rough as gravel as always, but tinged with endearment.

He glanced to their face and a grin spread across his lips. "Sunshine?" he asked.

"You only ever see me in the moonlight," they reminded him, "but now I see you in the sun."

It sounded poetic when they said it, but they were being rather literal. The window behind him was open, the sun blazing in to paint him in pale blue light, and while the cityscape stretched out beyond it they only looked at him.

He felt very seen. He felt very admired. He felt that he might be in love with the person standing before him.

Suddenly, uncertainty seemed like such a trivial thing to run from. The night didn’t feel something to hide in.

"Moonlight," he grinned, and he felt no sourness in the name anymore, "you're turning into a real romantic."

They laughed and chucked their towel at him; he caught it and threw it back.

"Get showered, Sunshine!" They called to him as they turned away, retreating back into the bathroom to finish their morning routine. "We have a morning to waste together."

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote like all of this at midnight last night n woke up this morning n reread it n went "damn thats kinda sexy" so i decided to clean it up and post it i hope y'all enjoyed. mwah.


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